On Tuesday 19th of June at 10:00 AM i had to be at Intercomp for the first time to introduce myself and get to know everybody. The evening before, i desperately tried to find out how to even get there. I got the address and even an excerpt from Google Maps from Joseph. So because i was spoiled by the fantastic homepage www.bvg.de i thought: "OK, pretty easy, i'm just going to punch in the address on the homepage of the local bus company and that's it." Oh man, was i wrong... Get this: On www.arriva.com.mt you just can NOT enter an address and not even a specific bus stop! You have to enter a village or part of a city. To all Berliners: Imagine you would only have the possibility to enter things like "Tempelhof" or "Neukoelln" into bvg.de. That would suck, right? Well that's exactly how it is here and i have to deal with it. After about 2-3 hours i finally managed to find 5 different bus lines that go roughly in the direction i need to go. So i just told myself to relax, get up early and try one of those lines the next morning.
After all that trouble it was surprisingly fast and easy to get to Intercomp (at least on the first day). I even arrived half an hour early. I just took one of the lines i picked out the day before, waited till i saw my bus stop on the display, got out, and stood in front of the building i was looking for.
My boss Stephen, the Technical Services Director of Intercomp, is a very nice person who welcomed me with a smile. We had a little chat about me, the company and what i knew about it. (good thing i read the about-page the evening before ;) Then he introduced me to Kevin, who is my mentor here with whom i'm going to work most of the time. Kevin is a cool and funny guy and he introduced me to the rest of the team. Everybody here is very friendly and helpful and although now i'm only here for a few days i already had a lot of fun with the guys and feel like i'm welcome and accepted.
Then i started working right away. Kevin's tasks are to repair and maintain laptops and my job is to help him as much as i can and learn something about it while doing so. There's always a whole lot of laptops here at once, me and Kevin normally work on about 5 of them simultaneously. On my first day i dismantled a laptop nearly completely and then exchanged a broken palm rest. We also clean fans, exchange various broken parts, install operating systems and other software, and do every imaginable kind of trouble shooting. Every Laptop has to undergo a series of diagnostic tests before it can be given back to the customer. That takes about an hour during which one can't do anything else but wait. That's why i'm even able to bring my own laptop here and write this blog on working hours. :)
My working hours are from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM with a break from 1:00 PM to 2:00 PM. I had to make the experience, that it is more or less impossible to regularly make it on time if i drive with the bus. I must have been really lucky the first day, because the second day i was late almost an hour. First i took another bus line because the line i took the first day only drives once per hour. But that other line took more than half an hour to take me as far as the first one did in 5 minutes. And then it didn't even drive all the way to the company, but had the terminal station somewhere on the way. Then i had to ask somebody which bus to take to get to Intercomp and when i finally arrived it was almost 9:00 PM. (The bus i took showed line 210 on the display outside, but 206 on the display inside, i still don't know which bus it really was ^^) Fortunately Kevin also knows about how much Maltese buses suck and told me it's no big deal if i come late every now and then. I did find a pretty reliable connection now and if the traffic plays along i'm here on time.
Wow, that was a lot more than i intended to write initially and i could still go on, but because it's almost 5 o'clock now i need to stop. I guess my next post will have to wait until next week, but i will try to finally add some pictures to the blog on the weekend.
PS.: Feel free to post comments or questions if you feel like it :)
Update: Added some pictures. Sorry for the crappy quality, but my mobile phone camera sucks.
Intercomp Ltd.
After all that trouble it was surprisingly fast and easy to get to Intercomp (at least on the first day). I even arrived half an hour early. I just took one of the lines i picked out the day before, waited till i saw my bus stop on the display, got out, and stood in front of the building i was looking for.
My boss Stephen, the Technical Services Director of Intercomp, is a very nice person who welcomed me with a smile. We had a little chat about me, the company and what i knew about it. (good thing i read the about-page the evening before ;) Then he introduced me to Kevin, who is my mentor here with whom i'm going to work most of the time. Kevin is a cool and funny guy and he introduced me to the rest of the team. Everybody here is very friendly and helpful and although now i'm only here for a few days i already had a lot of fun with the guys and feel like i'm welcome and accepted.
Then i started working right away. Kevin's tasks are to repair and maintain laptops and my job is to help him as much as i can and learn something about it while doing so. There's always a whole lot of laptops here at once, me and Kevin normally work on about 5 of them simultaneously. On my first day i dismantled a laptop nearly completely and then exchanged a broken palm rest. We also clean fans, exchange various broken parts, install operating systems and other software, and do every imaginable kind of trouble shooting. Every Laptop has to undergo a series of diagnostic tests before it can be given back to the customer. That takes about an hour during which one can't do anything else but wait. That's why i'm even able to bring my own laptop here and write this blog on working hours. :)
My working place
My working hours are from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM with a break from 1:00 PM to 2:00 PM. I had to make the experience, that it is more or less impossible to regularly make it on time if i drive with the bus. I must have been really lucky the first day, because the second day i was late almost an hour. First i took another bus line because the line i took the first day only drives once per hour. But that other line took more than half an hour to take me as far as the first one did in 5 minutes. And then it didn't even drive all the way to the company, but had the terminal station somewhere on the way. Then i had to ask somebody which bus to take to get to Intercomp and when i finally arrived it was almost 9:00 PM. (The bus i took showed line 210 on the display outside, but 206 on the display inside, i still don't know which bus it really was ^^) Fortunately Kevin also knows about how much Maltese buses suck and told me it's no big deal if i come late every now and then. I did find a pretty reliable connection now and if the traffic plays along i'm here on time.
Wow, that was a lot more than i intended to write initially and i could still go on, but because it's almost 5 o'clock now i need to stop. I guess my next post will have to wait until next week, but i will try to finally add some pictures to the blog on the weekend.
PS.: Feel free to post comments or questions if you feel like it :)
Update: Added some pictures. Sorry for the crappy quality, but my mobile phone camera sucks.
